GW620 Is LG's First UK Android Phone

The other Korean phone manufacturer, LG, has announced the availability of its first Android smartphone in the UK as the GW620 which will be available on T-Mobile and its MVNO, Virgin Mobile, at in the forthcoming weeks.

The In Touch GW620, formerly known as Etna, has been released back in September 2009 and comes with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, a 3-inch 480x320 pixels touchscreen, a five-megaixel camera with Flash and a 4x digital zoom.

The rest of the specs is pretty standard; the whole bunch of Google services, a 3.5-mm headphone socket, A-GPS, a pre-loaded Facebook application, support for HSDPA 3G speeds and a single physical photo in the front.

Virgin Mobile will offer it for as little as £49.99 when you take its 18-month, £18 month contract that comes with unlimited mobile internet, 150 minutes and 500 texts (that's a total outlay of £373.99).

Bump your monthly outgoings to £22 per month (that's £396 for the duration of the contract) and you will get 250 minutes, unlimited texts and mobile internet.

LG Mobile’s Sales and Marketing Director, John Barton, said in a statement that “This is a symbolic launch for us. It signals the end of expensive and exclusive applications and the start of applications for everyone.”

The LG GW620, which runs on Android, will be able to access up to 20,000 applications, most of them free. Also unlike Samsung, LG hasn't yet shown any ambitions to launch its own operating system.

Our Comments

The LG GW620 is a notch higher than the other mainstream Android platforms. It is certainly not equivalent to the Google Nexus One when it comes to the hardware but can more than keep it with the likes of the HTC Tattoo which is slightly more expensive.